Researchers at the City University of Hong Kong found the secret to a more efficient, less expensive approach to keeping massive computer systems cool: Just add salt.
This article is very hard to read, there are so many bad comparisons, it feels like the author wants me to be VERY excited for this technology, which most likely means that it's not working, so they farm clicks. Anyone else get that vibe?
I don’t see any possible issues with salt solutions near metal components. I mean cars drive through salt all the time and it’s not like they rust. The whole in the floorboard of my car is obviously a feature that was time-delay delivered.
I mean you could at least read the article before making a low effort comment.
The design doesn’t put any salt solution near computer components, and it doesn’t use the same salt they put on the roads.
It uses lithium bromide, and given this is about large cloud computing server farms and not PCs, they still use heat sinks on the components, but the salt solution is used in a permeable membrane separately that the heat sinks divert heat to.
The article was describing a passive cooling solution. As in a cheaper way to cool parts that don't already output borderline unmanageable amounts of heat. Regular watercooling can already keep practically any consumer gpu from getting anywhere near 90c it's just that that's too much work for most people.
And expensive. I just priced out a basic WC setup for a GPU using moderate quality parts and flex tubing and it’s $275, and I already have the waterblock for the GPU. For my gaming PC it was easily $500 in additional parts. Pumps, fans, radiators, reservoir, hard tube, and FML decent quality fittings are expensive.
The high moisture absorption capacity and low cost of the lithium bromide-treated water offers a clear advantage over competing cooling strategies using hydrogels and metal-organic frameworks. Those systems require time-consuming regeneration rates and require active replenishment of water supplies.
Wu, in his paper, said the device "can spontaneously and quickly recover its cooling capacity by absorbing water vapor from the air during off hours."
So, also time consuming and would likely require active replenishment. Got ya.